Mediterranean ecosystems and landscapes, their dynamic and

holistic management and conservation.

In 1970, at the 11th symposium of the British Ecological Society on The Scientific
Management of Animal and Plant Communities for Conservation, Naveh presented
the first results of these studies on this subject and their far-reaching implications. He
maintained that the untillable Mediterranean upland ecosystems have been exposed to
human activities for long periods, first in the Pleistocene by human habitation, fire,
hunting and food gathering, and in the Holocene by grazing and browsing of domestic
livestock, woodcutting, brush clearing and cultivation. This leads to the extinction of
big mammals herbivores and most of their predators, the loss of taller trees, the
erosion of the upper soil profile and the impairment of watersheds, and, finally the
overall desiccation. Consequently, the primeval "climax" forests have been turned into
human-degraded and converted upland ecosystems of sclerophyll woodland, shrubland,
savannas and derived grasslands. In these landscapes, fire, humans and their habitation
sites, their ax and livestock have become inseparable and integral parts of these semi-
natural landscapes. Therefore, the total exclusion of human interventions from these
semi-natural habitats cannot be regarded as creating a "natural" situation leading to a
hypothetical climax.

The preservation of their striking structural, functional and biological diversity and
stability is threatened not only by urban, industrial and agricultural expansion, but also
by the planting of dense and monotonous Allepo pine (Pinus halepensis) forests and the
protection of inaccessible Maquis thickets, as potential "climax communities". In oak
savannas and in open Maquis and shrubland, the dynamic flow equilibrium (or
''homeorhesis") of trees and shrubs and the herbaceous understorey, containing many
attractive flowering plants and favorable niches and edge habitats for animals, can be
maintained only by active human intervention. These findings were later on further
supported with the help of hemisphere photography and light radiation measurements,
revealing the strong correlation between both diffuse and direct light, and the richness
of the understorey species.

Therefore, a dynamic and integrated ecosystem approach is necessary in which

controlled grazing and browsing, cutting and prescribed burning and other defoliation
agents can be used as management tools.

In nature reserves, these findings imply the continuation of moderate, controlled and
non-destructive intervention, together with protection and experimental manipulation of
representative ecosystems.
In national parks, planted forests and open wildlands, it implies the optimization of
landscape values for multiple use benefit for pasture, forest, recreation, tourism, and
wildlife and watershed management. This can be achieved by conversion of Maquis,
tall - and dwarf-shrublands into open forest, woodland and savannas with well
developed and ornamental shade and forage trees and a rich herb layer. For dynamic
planning of these land-use patterns, comprehensive and integrated ecosystem research
in Mediterranean uplands is urgently required.

In this and in further studies, Naveh rejected the wholesale and irrational condemnation
of fire and goats, and objected to the noninterference paradigm for natural reserves.
According to the then widely accepted Braun-Blanquet climax-succession theory, this
paradigm was supposed to lead to the desirable climax communities but in fact, resulted
in dense, monotonous Maquis ticket. As an alternative, Naveh recommended the
controlled use of wild and domestic ungulates, including goats, to open dense Maquis
thickets and of prescribed burning to reduce the dry fuel in conifer forests. At that
time, his suggestions aroused fierce opposition in Israel and other Mediterranean
countries by phytosociologists, nature conservationists, ecologists and foresters,
including his former teachers from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

It took almost twenty years before his recommendations were accepted and adopted by
the Natural Reserve and Park Authorities in conservation management. The use of
prescribed burning in a Pinus brutia forest on Mt. Carmel for fire and fuel management
was examined in 1990, also by an interdisciplinary team, led by foresters, verifying
Naveh's findings.

In a joint study with Dr. Joel Dan, a well-known pedologist from the Israel Vulkani
Agriculture Research Institute, on the human degradation of Mediterranean
landscapes in Israel (published in: Springer: Ecological Studies, Analysis and
Synthesis, Vol. 7, 1973) they used ancient abandoned and disintegrating terraces in the
southern Judean Hills as an example of the close interaction between natural and
cultural processes. Expanding their investigation from the smallest landscape units or
"ecotopes" of single terraces to the regional landscape system, they realized that this
consists of catenas of contrasting slopes in ecological and pedological features either as
cultivable terraces or non-cultivable rocky, shrub-covered pastures. These differing
long-term land use histories had far-reaching implications for the fate of the contrasting
slopes, showing that on these non-cultivable slopes a new equilibrium has been
established between trees, shrubs, herbs, grasses and geophytes.

In their conclusions, they warned that if the threatening trends of landscape degradation
proceed unhampered, the few remaining spots of open landscapes will be turned into
overcrowded recreational slums. Unfortunately, as will be shown below, this
prediction has come true.

In 1973, Naveh was joined by Professor Robert Whittaker from Cornell a leading and
world-renowned American plant ecologist in the first Mediterranean study on
structural and floristic diversity of shrublands and wood-lands in Northern Israel
and other Mediterranean areas, including also the extensive biodiversity studies in
other Mediterranean type landscapes by Whittaker (published in "Vegetatio" in 1979).
These investigations of vascular plant diversity in Israel were combined with a study of
animal species diversity, led by Professor M. Warburg, from the Technion Faculty of
Biology.

The Israeli study provided convincing proof that richness and diversity of herbaceous
species was dependent on the kind and intensity of defoliation pressures in shrublands
and on grazing intensities in open Tabor oak woodlands. Biodiversity was highest
under moderate grazing during the main winter rain growth season. These findings
were corroborated on a much larger scale in 1991 by the findings of Dr. Emanuel Noy-
Meir, professor of ecology at the Hebrew University, and Dr. Didi Kaplan, chief
biologist at the Natural Reserve and Park Authorities. Biodiversity increased along a
declining moisture gradient, with highest woody and herb species richness in open
 Pistacia lentiscus shrubland on the xeric borders of the Mediterranean climate zone on
Mt. Gilboa (described already in the Bible as a dry place, "lacking dew and rain"). Here
Naveh and Whittaker found shrubs and herbs with one of the highest species diversity
in the world. Mt. Gilboa also ranked highest in animal species diversity. In an
additional, eco-physiological study, the ecotype of P. lentiscus on Mt. Gilboa proved
itself as the most drought-tolerant of all ecotypes tested in Israel. This is probably not
only true for P. lentiscus, but also for this and other sclerophyll shrubs throughout the
Mediterranean.

In 1977, Naveh developed a model of multipurpose management strategies for

marginal and untillable Mediterranean upland landscapes, published, amongst
others, in the Satellite Program in Statistical Ecology of the International Statistical
Program in "Statistical Ecology Series" in 1979. In this model, the multipurpose
afforestation strategy had optimal landscape values and most desirable ecosystem
functions.

Based on the results of these studies, and the resulting model, Naveh suggested to the
foresters and the forest engineers of the Israel National Fund to convert all the highly
inflammable dense and low productive pine forests into more open recreation and
multipurpose forests. At that time, his recommendations were rejected by the foresters
of Israel who still clung to the classical model of dense conifer production forests,
which they adopted uncritically from European conditions. On the other hand, at a
FAO-UNESCO Technical Consultation on Forest Fires, in Southern France in May
1977, Navehs presentation of the results of these studies created great interest amongst
Mediterranean foresters. Naveh was invited for further lectures, and served as advisor
in Sardinia and Sicily on the implementation of his suggestions on fire and fuel
management and multi-purpose afforestation.

Only much later, Naveh's suggestions were realized finally by the Jewish National Fund
foresters in Israel, developing and managing the planted pine forests and Maquis
shrublands into recreation forests. As predicted by Naveh, this development also
alleviated the heavy visitor pressures on nature reserves and national parks.

In 1984, at an international conference, organized by IUFRO (International Forestry

Organization) on "Policy Analysis for Forestry Development", at Thessalonica,
Greece, Naveh presented his suggestions on the ecological and sociological challenges
of multiple uses of Mediterranean uplands. Naveh stated the need to reconcile the
conflicting demands between conservation and socio-economic benefits, with the help
of an integrative approach of interdisciplinary systems-oriented landscape-ecological
planning, management and education.

In 1988, at the 8th European Ecological Symposium, in Siena, Italy, (published in

1991 by Ellis Horwood Press on "Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecosystems, Perturbation
and Recovery") Naveh presented in more detail the untillable Mediterranean
landscapes as "perturbation dependant natural-cultural systems, far from equilibrium".
They require the maintenance and restoration of the homeorhetic flow equilibrium
between the biological diversity and the "Total Landscape eco-diversity", namely
ecological heterogeneity and cultural diversity, as influenced by human land uses. This
dynamic flow equilibrium replaces the homeostatic "balance in nature" metaphor,
maintained without human interference in natural landscapes. To achieve this goal, it is
essential to gain full knowledge and comprehension of the evolution and history of the
regional landscape.

In thermodynamic terms, semi-natural Mediterranean landscapes, as well as all other

semi-natural agro-silvo-pastoral landscapes, behave like dissipative structures that are
far from equilibrium. They are maintained and stabilized only by permanently
interchanging energy and entropy with their environment of cyclical perturbations for
many centuries by recurring fires, rotational grazing, browsing, burning, cutting and
coppicing regimes, sometimes together with cultivation and other land uses The latter is
the case, for instance, in the "Montado" Cork Oak (Quercus suber) savannas in
southern Portugal.

In 1992, Naveh organized jointly with Dr. Almo Farina, the director of Museo di Storia
Naturale della Lunigana, Aulla (Italy), the first conference on the future of
Mediterranean landscapes. The conference was attended by more than 150 scientists
from 12 countries, and published in "Landscape and Urban Planning" as a special
volume in 1993. Naveh introduced "Red Books for Threatened Landscapes" as an
innovative tool for holistic landscape conservation, which he initiated in a special Task
Force of the IUCN Commission on Ecology. Its aim was to convince the public and the
decision makers of the vital need to preserve the natural and cultural richness of these
landscapes for future generations. This project was expanded later into a full-fledged
Working Group within the Commission on Environmental Strategies and Planning. At
this conference, a special workshop was devoted to the first results of the "Red Books"
(now termed "Green Books") pilot project in Western Crete, sponsored by the European
Unit (EU).

In 1997, in a keynote lecture at the 6th International Conference of Mediterranean

Ecosystem Scientists (MEDECOS) in Chile, (published by Springer, 1998, in
Vol.136 of the Ecological Series), Naveh summarized all the above-mentioned
insights, gained from his studies on Mediterranean landscapes. He delineated the
alarming trends and future prospects of Mediterranean uplands in the light of the global
environmental crisis as a vicious cycle of mutually amplifying and destabilizing
feedbacks of exponential growth of populations and their needs for open land, coupled
with the traditional and modern land use pressures and especially by rapidly growing
tourism. These pressures are combined with synergistic processes of greater intensity of
traditional and modem agricultural land uses and urban-industrial expansion on one
hand, and depopulation and land abandonment on the other. The resulting exponential
speed and extension of "neo-technological" and traditional landscape degradation and
desertification, are threatening their unique co-evolutionary biological and cultural
richness and their intrinsic and instrumental values.

Naveh updated these threatening trends of neotechnological Mediterranean landscape

degradation in his one of his most recent papers on sustainable management of
Mediterranean landscapes in the global information society (published in 2008 in the
"Israel Journal for Plant Science and in 2009 in "Landscape On Line"). He
showed that, as predicted, the heavy urban-industrial and tourist pressures on these
landscapes and on the environmental quality at large have increased even more as
predicted. In spite of several positive regional and international initiatives, the quality
of the environment and of the open landscape in all countries around the Mediterranean
Basin has further deteriorated. Unfortunately, his warnings that any increase in climatic
stress will further aggravate the process of overall landscape degradation have also
become true, especially in the more arid parts. We are experiencing an alarming
increase there in the frequency of extreme and even catastrophic meteorological events,
including unpredictable windstorms, heavy rainfall intensities, but also severe drought
spells with higher than average temperatures in the winter and higher frequency of
extreme temperatures in the summer. Therefore, we are faced with a period of
increasing uncertainty in spatial and temporal climatic trends with severe detrimental
ecological effects.

Naveh warned that climatic stresses are further enhancing brush encroachment in
abandoned and neglected forests and Maquis, thus encouraging their floristic
impoverishment and resulting in accelerated and widespread decline of the unique
biological, ecological, and cultural ecodiversity, productivity and stability. The
creeping forest die-back, caused chiefly by pests, disease and their synergetic
interaction with photochemical air pollutants further increases the accumulation of dry
fuel. This results in even greater inflammability and higher temperatures and
destructive power of the many wildfires raging in all Mediterranean forests and
shrublands, such as the most catastrophic wildfires in summer 2007 in Greece and the
fall of 2010 in

Naveh concluded that these severe threats of global climate changes and their
synergistic couplings with land degradation and desertification are an additional
compelling reason to greatly increase all efforts for conserving and restoring the health,
integrity and ecodiversity of as many as possible of these most valuable landscapes.
These landscapes have to serve not only the material and economic needs of the people,
but also the spiritual needs, wants, and aspirations of all stake holders involved. For this
purpose, biosphere landscapes should not merely be viewed as a source of our
materialistic satisfaction, but also as a source of enlightenment and enjoyment, and of
mental health.

Naveh argued that in the Mediterranean, like all over the world, the Total Human
Ecosystem" and its landscapes are integral parts of the transition from the industrial to
the post-industrial global information age. According to recent studies of the foremost
system scientist, Ervin Laszlo, the Total Human Ecosystem is undergoing now a
destabilizing Macroshift towards a chaos point or so-called "bifurcation" from a meta-
stable attractor point to non-linear and chaotic ones. Whether in this critical stage, this
bifurcation will lead to further evolution or to further creeping decline until final total
collapse, will depend almost entirely on the decisions and behavior of human society
and their decision makers on all levels. Therefore, the main challenge for landscape
ecologists is to respond together with all others, concerned with sustainable land use
planning and development, to the demands of the emergent global information society
by taking an active role in steering this Macroshift towards an all-embracing
sustainability revolution, leading to new post-industrial symbiotic relations
between nature and the emerging global information society.

This will demand from all concerned environmental scientists and especially for those
dealing with land use planning and management, conservation and restoration a mind
shift from narrow disciplinary approaches to transdisciplinary systems of thinking and
acting.